Three monitors on a 5770

LaCabra

Hey folks,

So I got an incredible deal on some monitors and I'm likely to have 3 24" displays within a week. However I have a nasty feeling my card might not be capable of running all three, and my google-fu appears not to be strong enough on this one.

Apparently it's standard for a Radeon 5770 to have a displayport as well as DVI and HDMI. My 5770, however, has one DVI, one HDMI, and one VGA, seen below.

I tried hooking up three displays once before, and it didn't work, but I couldn't be bothered troubleshooting it at the time so it's possible I was doin' it wrong. A friend suggests using something like this but I'm not sure, mightn't that just clone that display? Hopefully someone here can shed some light on this for me.

Thanks in advance!

MrDelish

That would just split one monitor connection. ATI has Eyefinity which lets a single card output to 3 monitors, though I don't know if 5770s support it. A lone 5770 will likely have problems rendering to three displays anyway, though, so you may want to get a low-power secondary video card to get three displays going.

I have three monitors, too, but I've always used a 2-card setup.

LaCabra

Alas, my board has but one PCI-E slot.

Donovan Puppyfucker

Sell off some of your spare monitors and your current card, and put the money towards a a better video card?

MrDelish

You'll probably be fine with just two displays, really. I have three monitors but only use two due to lack of desk space and it's not too huge a difference.

LaCabra

chrishallett83 wrote:

Sell off some of your spare monitors and your current card, and put the money towards a a better video card?

The spares are all 17s, so they won't fetch a lot. I probably will just wait and buy a new card when I can although probably nothin' as upmarket as that.

BigBadWolf

Depending on what you're planning to use the monitors for, have you considered a USB video card. We use a bunch at work for muli-monitor capability on some of the really old PCs and they generally work OK.

You can't use them for playing graphically-intensive games (they would probably melt), but for general desktop usage it should be fine.
I think the worst issue we've had with them is they occasionally lock up, but unplugging them for a few seconds always fixes it - again that maybe something you can live with or a complete deal-breaker.

Random 1st example:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002ZT08U6/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=googlcom03-21&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creativeASIN=B002ZT08U6

zeeny

You can't run triple display without display port(I've also never seen a 5770 who doesn't have it, so that's a bit surprising).
I've run triple display on a 5770 in the past but I got a Dell p2310h which had the needed interface to make it work.

LaCabra

Yeah seems like I'm fucked with this videocard. Ah well. Eventually I will be able to just buy a new one. And yeah, seems like 5770s without DP are pretty unheard of. Unfortunate.

Unfortunately a USB video card isn't really doable because I'll be using this setup for game devving.

Thanks folks!